The new Waze Wiki, aka Wazeopedia, is now live at Wazeopedia.waze.com! While this legacy wiki will remain accessible for the time being, it is no longer updated by the community. For the most up-to-date guidance, please visit your local Wazeopedia.

Please do not make any more updates to these legacy wiki pages, all future updates should be made in your country's local Wazeopedia.

Contents

Waze road types for Canada

Highways in Canada (specifically Ontario and Quebec, my only experience) are different than ones in the US. According to the US road types we would have no (or few) major highways.
Several highways are major, but not limited for example in the Montreal/Ottawa area.

148 117 125 132 138 in Quebec, which are major compared to 300 series routes which are in yellow.

17 138 38 7 in Eastern Ontario, this would distinguish them from county roads which are all yellow.

It would be far more useful for Canadian wazers to have these as major highways, how about we define standards for Canada?

How about out west and the maritimes? I don't know the road systems out there but are there similar problems?

Out west: coming from Alberta & BC, there are few "Major" highways -- for most of these provinces, you'll see two major routes going east-west (TCH Hwy 1 & TCH Hwy 16), and one or two major routes going north-south (BC 5, 97/97C; AB 2).

As most of these routes pass through cities, the US definitions break (there are stop lights, for example, on the TCH 1 through Calgary).

I would propose that we not downgrade these routes to "Minor" when they pass through a city -- it is useful for those from outside the city to know the official route they are trying to follow, even if it's not the most major of streets in that locale. doctorkb

Agreed. We are going to have a hard time coming up with a national standard; it's going to have to be province-by-province standards. As a starting point for discussion, I would suggest copying the U.S. definition for freeway (multilane, can get on or off only at ramps). For "major highway", a definition that might work for Alberta would be a highway where a significant part of it is multilane divided, but traffic can enter at lights or stop signs. But in Atlantic Canada, northern Ontario, northern B.C., etc., they might want some two-lane highways to be "major". And "minor highway" would be anything else with a provincial highway number. Erablian 21:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts on rural roads? Primarily AB and BC (where I'm most experienced). Saskatchewan and Manitoba probably follow along in similar fashion from what I remember of my brief trips through. My personal opinion is that gravel TWP and Range roads should be of Street types while paved TWP and Range roads should be Primary types. I believe this would have the advantage of routing down a preferred paved road, similar to the FC system being used in Edmonton and others. mtylerb 13:56, 17 July 2015

Additionally, the Dirt Road/4x4 type roads are very difficult to see on the map. Street allows them to be sufficiently visible. mtylerb 20:38, 17 September 2015

ABSOLUTELY NOT. The Dirt Road/4x4 has the added feature of being avoidable in the client settings. If a road is not paved, it MUST be set to Dirt. If it is paved, Twp and Rge roads can be set to PS or Street -- there was some guidance on this in the forums as far as how many to set as PS (vs Street) when there are a bunch that are paved. If you have your client set to permit Dirt roads, then they're considered PS in the routing engine. Doctorkb (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

How does the client respond when the dirt road is the only method of accessing an address? Does it treat it as a private road and still direct traffic down that route? mtylerb 23:28, 18 September 2015

Actually, after further reflection on this topic, your response above has brought more questions than answers. What you're saying is that in a city, the lack of road types has lead to the creation of a "functional classification" system, wherein 109 St NW in Edmonton is classified as a "Major Hwy" because the road is of such construction as to warrant that classification and to assist in favourable routing. Even though the same issue is present in rural areas, we cannot use a similar functional classification system simply because a setting allows the client to avoid dirt roads.

The issue is that most roads are dirt in rural areas and if you're not willing to drive down these dirt roads, you probably should not be driving outside city limits. Granted, not all roads are gravel, but most. With the exception of Hwy 770 and Hwy 617 (minor Hwys), every RR and TWP Road in the area surrounding Warburg, is gravel. Some are in better condition than others. South of Spruce Grove tends to be the exception where many roads are paved, even if in a terrible state of repair.

Additionally, in small towns such as Cynthia and Alder Flats, your main Hwy is paved, but the rest of the roads are gravel. So even though it is laid out with a grid pattern and (in the rural sense) is of a better construction, we can't use PS and St types to give favourable routing simply because it's gravel and we wouldn't want someone to be routed down those roads.

Another issue we'll have rurally, is that you have multiple types of gravel roads. Some are a good 2.5 vehicles wide and graveled/groomed so as to be in great condition comparatively speaking. Some, however, are barely 1 vehicle wide and are full of ruts and pot holes or can be 7" deep in mud during parts of the year. With the current statement of "If a road is not paved, it MUST be set to Dirt", you are telling me that I have to tell the client that these two roads are one and the same.

All in all, I realize the system was generally designed for Urban use, but it has expanded due to crowd sourcing. We need to be able to adapt the client and mapping rules to work in all situations, not just urban ones. I'm not suggesting changes to urban FC, just in how we currently address rural street typing to make it more efficient, consistent and (in the end) favourable for routing purposes to the end user.

PS I'm not being argumentative, just trying to have a discussion on a topic that I'm relatively passionate about. Especially considering how much time I spend on said gravel roads and the bad routing advice I've had from mapping applications in the past, including Waze. I know hundreds of people who use gravel roads, but cannot rely on applications such as Google Maps. Currently they are forced to pay $200-$300 on Oiltrax software which is only updated 1 or 2 times per year with their offline GPS systems.

If we could improve the routing advice provided by Waze, especially considering the cost, I'm sure that adoption amongst these types would increase substantially. Most of these guys are driving remote roads with cell boosters, so the amount of advice coming in from these remote locations would be extremely helpful in opening the system to another large sector of road users.mtylerb 20:55, 20 September 2015

Street names and abbreviations

The default (system generated?) street names of many streets in Canada are not abbreviated. Will these names be auto updated by the system? It would be a huge amount of work to edit all the street names to show abbreviations as suggested.

Think of it this way -- it's an easy way to get to 100K or 200K edits! :) Doctorkb 21:52, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Long low-speed 'highways'

There are areas in Ontario where roads are technically 'minor highways' and yet are 50 or even 40km/h zones and we're routing people through them despite having no increased speed or capacity for their travel. We really need a policy for re-designating long stretches of low-speed 2-lane roadways as at best 'primary street'. Examples: East St in Bobcaygeon and O'Brien/Raglan in Renfrew (which is *not* a major highway) --Tallfastcanadian (talk) 01:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Technically all roadways on public property in Ontario is a "Highway" as per the HTA.

u-turns, default to prohibited?

It seems that for some reason it's being recommended that u-turns default to prohibition unless explicitly allowed.
What's the rational for this?

I can't speak for other provinces, but in Ontario, there are very rare instances where u-turns are actually prohibited and no sign is posted. Most of the time u-turns are allowed. Additionally, I've never seen a u-turn allowed sign.